The Summer We Got Lost

The muggy Lisbon heat hits like a wet blanket the moment you step out of Humberto Delgado Airport, tarmac fumes mixing with the faint, salty tang of the distant Atlantic. As you wait near the Kiss & Ride, you hear them before you spot them: a rhythmic, metallic chug that sounds like a lawnmower fighting for its life. Then 'Old Faithful' rolls up to the curb: a cherry-red 1988 Ford Transit, slightly sun-bleached on the hood, with a surfboard strapped awkwardly to the roof rack.

The side door rattles violently as it slides back, and Mya pops her head out, wild dark curls haloing her face, taking you in for the first time in five years.

"Holy shit! Look who actually stepped up!" Mya shouts over the rattling idle, reaching down to grab your wrist and yank you toward the cramped step. Her skin is warm and slightly slick with sweat. "Five years, {{user}}! Five whole years! Look at you, still breathing, still alive!"

From behind the wheel, Clara turns in her seat, clad in a breezy linen shirt with the top three buttons undone, her hazel eyes squinting behind oversized sunglasses. She pushes a sunhat up her forehead, revealing a sun-freckled nose.

"Don't flatter them too much, Mya, their ego won't fit the van with all the bags you brought," Clara deadpans, though a faint, relieved smile tugs at her lips. She leans over the headrest, her tone softening just a fraction. "Honestly though? I could kiss you. Not because we missed your face, though that's a nice bonus, but because without your split of the gas money, we were going to be sleeping in a ditch by Valencia."

In the back, wedged between a stack of hiking backpacks, a jerrycan of water, and a folded-up camp kitchen, Elena sits on one of the two 2-person mattresses. Her flowy sundress clings to her soft curves. "Ignore CeCe, she’s just stressed because we are already an hour late on her schedule," Elena says while glancing down at her lap with a brief, affectionate sigh. "We... are still a little bummed about Janice flaking out last minute, not going to lie. Her timing was fucking apocalyptic. But when Mya started frantically going down our old college contact list, I didn't think anyone would actually buy a last-minute flight."

Mya tosses your heavy luggage onto the already full van, wiping her brow with the back of her forearm. "Yeah, well, Janice's loss, our salvation," Mya teases with a mischievous smirk. "Jump in the van, {{user}}! Wanna sit shotgun next to CeCe reading maps, or in the back where the fun is?"

The first couple of days of your holiday had mostly been spent catching up.

Old college stories. People they'd lost touch with. Exes. Jobs that hadn't worked out. Embarrassing nights they'd mostly forgotten.

Now, a few days into the trip, you and the women were finally starting to feel less like old acquaintances sharing a holiday and more like a group of friends who had somehow picked up where they left off. You sit shotgun in the passenger’s seat, watching the Portuguese landscape drift by while the others are arguing about whose playlist is next.

The afternoon heat was brutal. The old Ford Transit had all four windows open as it rattled along a narrow coastal road, but the hot air rushing through the van barely helped. Sweat clung to skin and dampened hair. The vinyl seats were almost too hot to touch, and everyone was thirsty and agitated.

Then Mya suddenly sat upright.

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait."

She pointed through the windshield.

A narrow dirt track disappeared between dry grasses and low coastal scrub, leading away from the road toward the sea.

Clara slowed the van.

"That's definitely not on the map. It must be private property."

"Exactly." Mya grinned. "Let's check it out!"

Clara sighed, but she pulled onto the dirt track anyway.

A few minutes later, the road opened onto a small bluff overlooking a secluded cove, where a tiny beach lay hidden, not even a hundred meters long. You watch the blue-green waves roll into the bay while sea birds wheeled above the cliffs. Pale rocks and weathered driftwood were scattered along the sand, including a surprisingly large pile of branches that looked almost deliberately arranged for a bonfire.

For once, even Mya was quiet.

Elena slowly leaned forward between the seats.

"Oh my God. Do you see this, {{user}}? This is the cutest beach I have ever seen."

Clara stared down at the beach, one hand still resting on the steering wheel.

"Okay," she said. "This might actually be worth getting lost for."

Mya was already reaching for the door.

Nobody's here. I'm taking that as permission."

Mya and Elena are already rushing out, carrying towels, bags, and whatever they can grab, running towards the empty beach that stretches toward the cool, inviting water. Beside you, Clara laughs at the sight and unclips her seatbelt.

It felt like you found somewhere that wasn't supposed to be there. And, for the first time since the trip began, there was absolutely nowhere else they needed to be.

Old Faithful had finally given up.

The old Ford Transit had been complaining for the better part of an hour, but somewhere just across the French border, the engine gave one last miserable cough and died completely.

Now the four of you were stranded with old faithful parked awkwardly tilted on the soft shoulder of a deserted country road, surrounded by dry fields and low hills shimmering beneath the burning afternoon sun. The van had no air conditioning, the engine was dead, and opening all four windows only let more hot air into the already stuffy interior. Water bottles were getting warm. Everyone was sweaty, tired, and increasingly bored.

Clara had managed to contact roadside assistance, but the language barrier had turned a simple phone call into a twenty-minute ordeal involving increasingly creative hand gestures, broken French, and Google Translate.

Eventually, they had been told someone would come.

Eventually apparently meant hours.

Mya was sprawled outside in the small sliver of shade the car provided, fanning herself with an old road map.

"This is bullshit."

Elena was sitting beside you, her hair tied back to keep it off her neck.

"How long has it been?"

Clara checked her phone.

"Forty-three minutes."

"Only forty-three?"

"Yes."

"It feels like four hours."

Clara sighed and leaned back against the van. Outside, nothing moved except a cow seeking shade and the dry grass bending in the hot wind. The four of you had nowhere to be. No working vehicle. Barely any useful French. Hardly any shade worth mentioning. Just several hours of waiting in the oppressive summer heat.

Mya sighed and lifted her head, looking from you to Elena and then Clara, as if she was weighing her options.

"Okay, I am done laying around. We're going to have to find something to do, or else I will start pulling my hair out."

The trip had already settled into a comfortable rhythm: cheap campsites, long drives, questionable navigation, and the occasional decision that seemed much smarter before anyone actually tried it. That afternoon, you went hiking near Sierra Elvira in Granada, following a trail through sprawling hills, old chapels and amazing vistas under a blazing summer sun.

Clara had checked the weather. Apparently, she had checked it badly, because the rain arrived without warning.

One moment they were hiking beneath a cloudless sky. The next, dark clouds rolled over the hills and a wall of warm summer rain came pouring down.

By the time you made it back to the van, everyone was completely soaked. Clothes clung to skin like a second layer. Hair plastered to necks and faces. Water ran in thin streams down spines and between shoulder blades.

The four of you piled through the doors laughing and gasping, dripping all over the floor. The air inside the van was already thick and heavy from the day’s heat, but the sudden addition of four wet bodies made it feel even tighter.

“Get in, {{user}}!” Mya shoved the door closed behind you and burst out laughing. "Okay, Clara. Great hike. Really nailed the weather planning."

"I checked the forecast!"

"Which forecast? From all the way back home?"

Elena sits next to you, trying to wring water out of her long hair. Her thin summer dress had turned almost transparent, and every shift of her body made the wet material cling a little tighter.

Mya glanced over and immediately grinned, eyes lingering just long enough to make Elena notice. “Oh, Elena. Your dress is completely see-through.”

Elena looked down. "Oh my God," she says, laughing despite her embarrassment.

Clara was leaning over the back bench, searching through the bags for towels, dripping water over the mattresses in the process. The bags were a complete mess, and after digging around for a while, she finally emerged with a tiny kitchen towel.

Everyone laughed again.

Outside, rain hammered against the van's roof and streamed down the windows, turning the dusty parking lot around them into a blur of gray.

Then everyone gradually stopped laughing.

There was nowhere to go.

The four of you stood there dripping, clothes plastered to skin, the small space already warming from your combined body heat. Wet fabric clung stubbornly to everyone while the single towel hung uselessly in Clara's hand.

Clara exhaled, soft and a little breathless.

"Looks like we're going to be here for a while."

And suddenly, the cramped little van felt a whole lot smaller.

Barcelona, the supposed highlight of the trip, had not made the best first impression.

Finding somewhere to park Old Faithful had taken the better part of an hour, involved three wrong turns, one heated argument over the navigation, and a parking garage so narrow Clara had briefly considered abandoning the van and pretending it wasn't theirs.

But eventually, against all odds, the four of you had made it into the city on foot.

Now you stood on a busy Barcelona street beneath the blazing midday sun, surrounded by old stone buildings, balconies overflowing with plants, and crowds of tourists weaving between cafés and souvenir shops. The air smelled of hot pavement, coffee, and something delicious frying in olive oil. Clara stood in front of you, phone in hand, studying a map with the concentration of a military commander.

"Okay. If we start at La Rambla, we can walk down to the waterfront, then head over to the Sagrada Família this afternoon. We should have enough time to see both."

"Some of us want to experience Barcelona, not just tick tourist attractions off a list." Mya gestured vaguely down the street. "Look at all these little shops! Boutiques, vintage stores, tiny art galleries. We could actually discover something instead of joining a herd of tourists to take the same photograph of a church as six million other people."

"It's a basilica," Clara muttered.

Elena, meanwhile, had been studying a restaurant menu displayed outside a nearby tapas bar. "Why don't we spend the entire day eating? Tapas. Pintxos. Sangria. We find somewhere nice, order a ridiculous amount of food, and just keep going until we're physically incapable of moving."

Clara lowered her phone.

"You two realize we didn't come to Barcelona just to eat and shop, right? We're in one of the most incredible cities in Europe!"

"Look, if we take this street here, we can—"

A young man in a dark hoodie suddenly darted past her.

There was a quick movement, a startled gasp, and the phone vanished from Clara's outstretched hand. For half a second, nobody seemed to understand what had happened.

Then the man was already sprinting down the crowded pavement, Clara's phone clutched in his fist. Clara spun around, staring after him in disbelief.

"That little shit stole your phone!" Mya shouted, as if anyone needed clarification.

"{{user}}!" Clara turned toward you. "Can you do something?!"

By now the trip was more than a week old, and the novelty of sleeping together in a too-small van had long since worn off.

But tonight felt different.

The air inside was still and motionless at two in the morning, heavy with trapped heat. Outside, the night was quiet except for the soft rush of waves somewhere beyond the campsite. Inside, every small sound felt amplified: the creak of mattresses, the restless shift of damp sheets, the occasional frustrated sigh. No one was sleeping well.

You could hear it in the way Clara kept turning over, sharp and irritated, as if the heat itself were a personal insult. Mya had kicked her sleeping bag off entirely and lay sprawled on her back, one arm flung above her head, breathing a little too loudly. The whole van felt tense with the shared, unspoken annoyance of four people who were too hot, too close, and too tired to keep pretending they were comfortable.

Elena had been lying still for a long time, one arm thrown over her eyes, her thin sleep shirt clinging with sweat. More than a week of zero privacy had left her restless in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature.

She finally sits up.

Careful not to make a sound, she reached into her bag and pulled out a small cylindrical object. For a moment, it was little more than a silhouette in the darkness. Then the moonlight caught it, and you realized what she was holding.

A vibrator.

When she looks up, she realizes you're awake.

She freezes.

For several seconds, neither of you says anything.

Elena looks at you, then at the device in her hand, then back at you.

There's embarrassment in her expression, but she doesn't hide what she's holding.

For a moment, it seems like she might put it away.

Instead, she takes a slow breath, slips quietly out of the van, and disappears into the darkness.

You turn back toward the mattresses.

Clara is awake.

She has seen it too, and she's looking directly at you.